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March 23, 2012

Sometimes I am just at a loss at what to do to help the students in my reading class.

Here’s the current situation. The chapter I’m teaching is called “Relationships” and it involves seeing what sort of organizational structure a paragraph uses. Here’s how a typical question in this chapter would go. The student would be given a paragraph like this:

The Zojirushi 16 oz Stainless Steel Thermal Mug is a miracle of modern design. The stainless steel construction is designed with preserving temperature in mind. In tests, the Zojirushi managed to hold heat in better than several other common thermoses available today. Similarly, the Zojirushi is designed with transportability in mind. The flip-top cap not only seals the bottle completely, but also gives you quick access to your beverage. A lock mechanism helps to keep it closed when you want it closed. Finally, the Zojirushi comes in a wide variety of fantastic colors to fit any style. Clearly, the Zojirushi 16 oz Stainless Steel Thermal Mug is the Thermal Mug of choice for the discerning Mug-purchaser.

Then they will be asked this question: Is this paragraph organized as a list of items, or in time order?

Clearly, this is a list of items, right?

My students can’t answer this sort of question. They’re trying, but they can’t, and I have no idea what to do. Usually, when a student has a problem, I can conceptualize where they may be having trouble seeing what’s going on, and thus extrapolate another way to explain things that would get around that blockage. With this, I can’t. I can’t understand how someone could be having trouble with this. Thus I just really don’t know how to show them how to figure this out. I try to point out key words within the text that indicate a paragraph is working chronologically, or try to show how the topic sentence of the paragraph wouldn’t work as one or the other, but they struggle. It’s not that they’re not trying. For the most part, I really feel they are. But something isn’t working, and I don’t know how to fix it.

This class has been by far my most challenging teaching experience. It’s all so… difficult. It’s difficult to teach people these things. Hopefully I’ll figure it out.

I’m having trouble picturing how they don’t understand it. A chronological sentence of, “He used his Zojirushi mug for coffee at breakfast time, followed by soup for lunch,” is totally different.
Maybe it’s confusing if it says, “The Zojirushi 16 oz Stainless Steel Thermal Mug is a miracle of modern design at 2:00pm. The stainless steel construction is designed with preserving temperature in mind at 3:00pm. In tests, the Zojirushi managed to hold heat in better than several other common thermoses available today at 4:00pm.”

I have enough trouble being frustrated with my classmates… I’m glad I’m not teaching them :p